Good morning!

Yesterday was just as exhausting as our first day of activities! We spent the day Burn Scrambling, Abseiling, Orienteering, Night line and Archery. Dinner was a delicious choice of fish and chips or mac ‘n’ cheese (yum yum!) with a creamy cheesecake for pudding.
Our night activity was a walk in the pith black up a hill, base camp could hear us laughing all the way up and down.
Quote of the week so far was during a terrifying climb up a rock face, “I’m not experienced enough for this!!!” Can you guess which primary 7 announced this?

We have been busy busy busy this week!  We have been learning to use a variety of tools in our writing and assessing our stories against our success criteria.  We used a variety of openers, connectives, alliteration and onomatopoeia. then we had to colour code our work to check if we had used everything.  Hard work but we learned lots about amazing story writing.

We also presented our powerpoints on inspiring people, it was great to share everyone’s thoughts and learn just how many of our families inspire us everyday.

So we were still enjoying Maths Week in P1 this week.  Our P7 buddies had been busy making us fantastic 2d shape jigsaw and 3d models.

I loved making my robot – Jacob

I liked it Isla – Olivia

I can’t wait to show mum – Oliwier

I liked working with my buddy – Florence

I made a nice robot – Mia

Thank you Caitlin – Ellen

I liked reminding the P7s of some of the shape’s names – Chloe

Thanks for helping me…I can’t wait to finish it – Rory

I really liked my robot – Dylan

I really liked my robot, thank ou for making it – Riley

I have two buddies so I got two robots J – Alfie

My robot was wobbly – Eoin

I would like to thank you very for the 3d and 2d shapes- Libby

Thank you for helping me to learn – Poppy

Thanks for all of you help – Hannah, Kayden and Laycee

I liked making my robot with Kayleigh – Emma

I made a robot and a robot picture – Finn

We have been learning about STEM subjects – Science, Technology Engineering and Maths – and designing and building various things like spaghetti bridges and aerodynamic objects.

Lewis W – its good because it will help if you want to become an engineer

Annabelle – its good because you also learn from your mistakes.

Ben W – I like it because it grows your mind bigger and helps you when you run into situations like it.

We continued with our People Who Changed the World learning, and found out about Nelson Mandela, we even got to read the book his great grandchildren have written and it was a signed copy.  Mrs Wood interviewed the Mandela Family at the Book Festival and she talked to us about them.  We also learned about Malala Yousafzai who was shot by the Taliban for wanting an education.  She is now a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and someone who we all respect.

Best learning this week:

Sophie – I liked doing the s1 maths work as it was challenging.

James – I liked STEM because I like experimenting.

Olivia – I liked reading the Malala story because it is interesting.

Emma & Evan – We liked learning about the Mardi Gras as part of our RME.

Ben W – I liked drawing our Nelson Mandela portraits, it was really fun.

We have all safely arrived in Oban and been very busy already!  We have been practicing our team work skills by completing challenges.  Just getting unpacked now before tea and off out for our evening activity.

Have a look at the Twitter page for updates each day….@Balbardie_PS

(you don’t need a Twitter account to see the posts)

Last week and at the beginning of this week, we were busy rehearsing for our Burns’ Supper.  This took place on Wednesday afternoon and invited guest came to join us.  During our Burns’ Supper we recited Scots poems, danced to Strip the Willow, sang Flower of Scotland as well as Auld Lang Syne.  We  also ate haggis neeps and tatties and drank Irn Bru!  Our celebration was very traditional as we had a Master of Ceremonies, toasts, addressed the haggis and said Selkirk Grace.

In P.E we have been learning Scottish dances including The Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow.  This is in preparation for the ceilidh that we will be attending at Bathgate Academy, with other cluster schools, on the 6th of February.

In writing we rewrote a Fairytale in the form of a playscript in Scots!  Some of us included very interesting twists to the traditional tales.  For example, Harry’s playscript is called Jack and the Text Message.  In his story, Jack finds a phone instead of magic beans!  We enjoyed writing in Scots as this incorporated humor into our scripts.  Our success criteria was to include Scots language; a character list/description, 3 or more scenes, character names in margin to show who is talking and stage directions in brackets.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Miss Bollen and P7b

Another term in P7 is complete!

Here are some of our highlights:

‘Team 5 winning the castles championship in P.E.’- Archie

‘I enjoyed moving up a stage on my saxophone.’ – Kamron

‘I enjoyed the Christmas panto!’- Casey

‘I enjoyed spending more time with my buddy.’- Steven

‘I enjoyed speaking at Church.’- Gary

‘Learning lots of multiplication strategies.’- Noah

‘I liked learning about USA.’- Emma

‘I liked doing my project.’- Kayie

‘Performing at Church.’- Lewis

‘Learning about co-ordinates.’- Harry

Enjoy the Christmas holidays everyone!

P7b

Wow! What a quick and terrific term.  We have learned lots about the rainforest and taken on additional responsibilities throughout the school.  Here are some of our highlights from term 1:

‘I learned about rounding in numeracy.’- Steven

‘Meeting our P1 buddies.’ – Emma

‘I enjoyed going to care class in the mornings and during wet breaks and lunches.’ – Luca

‘I really enjoyed making the silhouette of Hogwarts to display in our new library.’ – Fiona

‘I enjoyed the storyteller (Daniel Alison).  He was awesome.’ – Archie

‘Getting a buddy and spending time with them.’ – Tobin

‘Meeting Callum from Cool Creatures.’ – Noah

‘Making a bird with Mrs Thompson with chalk pastels.’ – Harry

‘I enjoyed holding an armadillo.’ – Skye

‘I enjoyed petting the palm civet called Mango.’ – Stacey

‘I liked the chameleon in Cool Creatures.’ – Casey

‘I liked playing with my friends at Golden Time.’ – Gabriel

‘I enjoyed Mrs Knowle’s party.’ – Robyn

‘I enjoyed speaking at Church.’ – Gary

‘I liked going out at break time with buddies.’- Katie

‘I enjoyed inspirational maths week.’- Fiona

‘I enjoyed the coffee morning.’ –Aidan

‘In maths I enjoyed the counting on strategy to solve subtraction sums.’ – Harry

‘I enjoyed Mrs Little’s assembly. I liked the drums.’- Jack

Have a lovely October break everyone!

Miss Bollen and P7b

We have had a fun filled week in Primary 7B. Callum from Cool Creatures brought some interesting animals from the rainforest to visit us on Tuesday.  We met a tortoise, an armadillo, a chameleon, a palm civet and some of us were brave enough to hold an albino python.  The tortoise did the toilet on our classroom floor. Yuck!!!

We have used what we have been learning about adaptation to create our own rainforest animals.  In literacy we have been learning about figurative language and we used this knowledge to write an ode to our animals including lots of examples of similes, metaphors and hyperboles.  Hyperboles are where you say something in an exaggerated way to prove a point.  We think our poems are the best in the whole universe!

Today it is Mrs Knowles’s last day in our class so we are having a party to say goodbye!

Have a lovely weekend.

From Mrs Knowles and Primary 7B

This week has been so busy preparing for the MacMillan coffee morning- some of us made posters to advertise the coffee morning and some of us set up on Thursday afternoon…

On Friday morning from 9.10-10.30 many of us were working on stalls and clearing tables, being photographers and ringing the bell between classes !!! It was a busy time for all concerned.

We all enjoyed juice and cakes at our time and some of us bought pocket money toys and helped raise more money for the important charity.

Our phrase of the week for French was Comment t’appelles tu?

In Art we have been working with chalks on our rainforest creatures- they look fantastic.

Creative writing was all about An adventure to the rainforest where we had to imagine we were biologists given funding to study an animal in its habitat in one of the rainforests for a month. We had to remember to hook the reader in with an exciting opening paragraph.

Maths at the moment is all about place value, speedy Mental Maths and Percentages- lots of Number talks to help challenge our thinking.

Pupil of the week is Kirsten

Mystery student for Friday was Ashleigh

Table of the week will be announced on Monday

Reminder

Outdoor PE is on Monday and Home Learning is due

Cool Creatures is on Tuesday

Art and Indoor PE is on Wednesday …Home Learning given out

P4 Assembly is on Thursday

Golden Time and Dress Down day are on Friday

Happy weekend,P7a 🙂

In numeracy this week we have been learning about rounding.  Rounding means making a number simpler but keeping its value close to what it was. The result is less accurate, but easier to use. Example: 73 rounded to the nearest ten is 70, because 73 is closer to 70 than to 80.  We also played a fun game to improve our times tables mental recall.

We have been using different strategies to help us learn our spelling words and playing games to help us remember them.

We completed our rainforest explorer stories, making sure they all make sense and include thoughts and feelings as well as VCOP.  We have also learned about similes and metaphors and created some of our own!

We have been learning more about animals of the rainforest and how they adapt to their surroundings.  This is called adaptation.

During Health and Wellbeing lessons we have been discussing the fact that we all go into the learning pit and we know strategies we can use to get ourselves back out again.

We have been enjoying our French lessons where we have been revising numbers, colours and greetings.

Au Revoir,

Mrs Knowles and P7b

Last week we had fun celebrating inspirational maths week.  Each day we watched inspiring videos to promote a growth mind set in numeracy and maths.  Key messages included; don’t give up, believe in yourself, speed is not important and mistakes help us learn.  We learned that our brain grows every time we make a mistake and learn from it!

We were reminded that maths is all around us and completed a maths trail in our front playground.  A maths trail is an organised walk through an area where pupils can experience maths in the real world. A trail helps to highlight the huge use we make of number in our everyday life and how maths surrounds us in even the most unusual areas.  We were asked to measure distances within the playground, solve calculations regarding the number of cars in the car park and recognise patterns within the garden etc.  We then created our own maths trail for our P1 buddies to support their learning in numeracy.

P7b